She has multiple accolades added to her belt for her research and community contributions: •
SA Woman of the Year (one of the three finalists) for the Science and Technology Category (2003).
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Recognised as one of top three NRF Top Women in Research (2006)
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Golden Key Honours Society - Association of Mathematics Education of South Africa (AMESA) Honorary life membership (2009) Association of Mathematics Education of South Africa (AMESA) Honorary life membership (2009) NSTF award for being the most outstanding Senior Black Female Researcher over the last 5 to 10 years in recognition of her innovative, quality research on teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms. (2011) CEO Magazine award for being the most influential woman in education and training in South Africa (2013) Order of the Baobab (Silver) conferred on her by the President of South Africa (2016)
Mamokgethi Phakeng was the founding Chairperson of the Board of the South African Mathematics Foundation (SAMF) from 2004 to 2006, and served as the secretary and member of the executive committee of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME) during 2003-2007. Passionate about empowering the youth, she is the founder of the Adopt-a-learner Foundation, a non-profit organisation that started in 2004 and provides financial and educational support to students from township and rural areas to acquire higher education qualifications.
Through my collaborations I am now extending this work to also focus on multilingual mathematics classrooms of immigrant learners As an academic and researcher, she has been focusing on developing key pedagogies for multilingual mathematics classrooms, since 2006. Her research focuses on mathematics in multilingual contexts. Her journey in this area of study started in 1998 with a concern about the low mathematics performance of a majority of learners in multilingual classrooms, in South Africa, who learn in a language that is not
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their home language. At the core of this concern was a need to address the uneven distribution of mathematical knowledge and success: “So far I have developed what I refer to as the deliberate, proactive and strategic use of the learners’ home language in the teaching of mathematics. In this work I specifically focus on algebra as an area of study that is used to communicate most of mathematics. Through my collaborations I am now extending this work to also focus on multilingual mathematics classrooms of immigrant learners and also undergraduate students”, she comments.
UCT Portfolio Responsibilities •
Strategic leadership
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Public relations, communications
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External relations
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Fundraising
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Council accountability
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Institutional financial sustainability
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Risk management
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Transformation
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Ceremonial functions
